Re: Draft Proposal to add Variation Sequences for Latin and Cyrillic letters

From: William_J_G Overington (wjgo_10009@btinternet.com)
Date: Thu Aug 05 2010 - 05:31:36 CDT

  • Next message: William_J_G Overington: "Re: Draft Proposal to add Variation Sequences for Latin and Cyrillic letters"

    Thank you for your reply.
     
    On Wednesday 4 August 2010, Karl Pentzlin <karl-pentzlin@acssoft.de> wrote:
     
    > WO> Why is it not possible specifically to request a one-storey form of lowercase letter a?
    >
    > I did not this, as I do not know a cultural context where the two-storey form is to be suppressed to prevent an "a" to be mistaken for any letter too similar to a two-storey a.
     
    Well, I was intending this as a straightforward way to access glyph alternates.
     
    Noticing that you mentioned cultural context, I have now remembered a situation that might perhaps be of interest.
     
    It was in a thread about fonts for teaching children in the United Kingdom how to read and write.
     
    http://forum.high-logic.com/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=296
     
    > WO> What happens in relation to a character such as g circumflex? Would one be able to access a glyph alternate for g circumflex?
    >
    > The variant selector can be followed by any diacritic which then is applied to the base character.
     
    Yet what if one wants to use the precomposed g circumflex character?
     
    > WO> Could there be variants for lowercase e, ...
    >
    > I have found none, which of course is no proof of
    > non-existence,
    >
    > WO> for a horizontal line glyph design, and for an
    > angled line,
    >
    > Not according to the principles outlined in my proposal,
    >
    > WO>  Venetian-style font, glyph design please?
    >
    > No.
     
    I was looking for a way to access a glyph alternate for typography, not for any cultural meaning. Maybe one might choose to use an e with an angled line in the words Venice and Venetian, for subtle effect in the typography. I find that adding alternate glyphs to fonts is a modern trend. There seems no current way to access them from plain text.
     
    > WO> Would it be possible to define U+FE15 VARIATION SELECTOR-16 to indicate an end of word alternate glyph for each lowercase Latin character?
    >
    > No. Even if you find a cultural context where such things are required, such things are positional variants which are to be handled by the proven mechanisms developed for scripts like Arabic.
     
    I am thinking of where a poet might specify an ending version of a glyph at the end of the last word on some lines, yet not on others, for poetic effect. I think that it would be good if one could specify that in plain text.
      
    William Overington
     
    5 August 2010
     

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